Knowing War: Moving Images and the Politics of Erasure in the Post 9/11 World
This one did not show up on our list of references, but thanks to Eileen for posting to Facebook.
Following events from a safe distance, war becomes a mediated phenomenon, increasingly observed and experienced through images online, on our phones, computers, televisions and cinema screens. . . . As Derek Gregory pertinently observes, ‘spaces of constructed visibility are always also spaces of constructed invisibility’ (2004: 199). This, in turn, raises important questions about what is missing from the images that circulate in the highly mediated experience of the war on terror. What are the intentional and unintentional processes of erasure that characterize this mediation? And what are the consequences of these erasures for cultural understanding? An investigation into these questions yields a number of sobering insights that emphasize the need for critical reflection on how we know war in the post 9/11 world.